Disney Will Give Snow White’s Sister Her Own Live-Action Film

You can’t keep a good brand down. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was the very first animated feature by Walt Disney (or anyone else, for that matter) all the way back in 1937. In recent years, Disney has made home video sequels to just about all of its animated classics, but not Snow White. Still, for a 75 year old movie, the Snow White name maintains some serious cache as a member of the roster of Disney Princess, and as the anchor of various amusement park rides throughout the Disney empire. And with the trend toward live-action adaptations of those princesses’ old movies (Cinderella, Alice in Wonderland, Maleficent) it was only a matter of time before someone tried to do the same with Snow White.

Okay, so technically two different companies have already tried it in recent years; Relativity made Mirror, Mirror with Lily Collins and Julia Roberts, while Universal released Snow White and the Huntsman with Kristen Stewart, Charlize Theron, and Chris Hemsworth. (That movie gets a Snow White-less sequel about Hemsworth’s hero this summer.) Perhaps that’s why Disney is taking a slightly different approach; The Hollywood Reportersays they’ve bought a script and pitch for a Rose Red movie, all about Snow White’s sister.

Although originally written by Justin Merz as a “stand-alone feature,” Evan Daugherty (who co-wrote Snow White and the Huntsman) got his hands on the idea and reworked it so it was “closer to the animated classic.” THR describes it as a “companion piece” to Snow White with a story that’s a...

...revisionist take that transposes Rose Red into the Snow White tale, making her a key player in the later part of the classic story. When Snow White takes a bite from the iconic poison apple and falls into her Sleeping Death, her estranged sister, Rose Red, must undertake a dangerous quest with Grumpy and the other dwarves to find a way to break the curse and bring Snow White back to life.

A lot of the new versions of the old Disney cartoons have to find ways to reckon with or rewrite their princess protagonists’ passivity. This Rose Red idea is a nice way of doing that for Snow White, who spends an awful lot of her movie asleep. Now her sister can take control of the narrative. Sorry, Prince Charming; if it makes you feel any better, Disney has a Prince Charming movie in development right now too. I’m sure you’ll get more screen time in that one.